About me
John Stewart is the Founder & Creative Director of ORRBITT CREATIVE GROUP, a niche design agency for the life sciences, biotech, & pharma industries. As a creative lead at previous agencies, John was tasked with illustrating scientific & medical graphics to visually explain mechanisms of action for an oncology therapeutics company.
"Scientific graphics, WTF are those
With the help of a .D. microbiologist consultant, the amalgamation of art, science, & brand reeled-in more biotech firms seeking similar aesthetics. And circa 2015, biotech brands were...
"Total garbage," John quips.
During those years, , a handful of larger therapeutics firms had enough funding to commission top-flight brand and design. Yet, no agency was specializing in it quite yet. The graph line of biotech startups and spinoffs was trending up-and-to-the-right with no signs of slowing. This was it. He was out of there and taking all the bait with him.
Those projects spawned ORRBITT circa 2017. It started with a small handful. Brand, logo, color, web, PowerPoint deck, scientific graphics. That's what biotech startups needed. Five years later, over 100 biotech companies, venture capital firms, and PR/MarCom have collaborated with ORRBITT. The agency is now helmed by a mix of 10 wizardly artists, designers, web developers, medical illustrators, & project managers.
Improbably as a non-scientist, John's artistic influence on the biotech industry speaks for itself. Especially considering half of new business is word-of-mouth; one biotech founder telling another pharma executive, telling PhD scientist colleagues, telling their venture capital investors - and the network now sustains itself. The other half of business arrives from organic search without a dime of SEO budget. It's a result of the quality of the ORRBITT brand and creative output.
"We just Googled and found you guys," scientists and founders often tell us. "We checked out some similar agencies, but ORRBITT's portfolio was hands-down the winner. You guys understand we what do. We don't have time to bring a big agency up to speed on our science, or how we acquire funding, or to whom we need to target our message." (Paraphrasing here.)
John's leadership has afforded ORRBITT the luxury of cherry-picking the companies we work with. More importantly, choosing which we'd prefer to avoid.
"I only care about the art," John always reiterates. "If the stars align, and we can retain creative freedom, the client is always happy in the end. It's when a project accumulates too many cooks-in-the-kitchen that things begin to break down. They trust us now to take them to the promised land."
That promised land is always more funding to maybe, hopefully, one day, get to them to market. The ones on the right path keep coming back as their story, science, and brand evolves. It's usually easier and cheaper to retain a client than garner a new one. John's figured out how to make it work both ways.
"John helped make biotech sexy," is a familiar thing we hear on video calls during introductions with our favorite partner agencies and new clients. Biotech startups frequently seek out the creators of their favorite competitor brands. Some have even admitted to sleuthing Chrome's website inspection tools to find crumbs leading to ORRBITT. (We don't footnote sites with "Created by ORRBITT".) They sometimes flat out list the companies for us. "Make us look better than them."
They start by asking their Public Relations, Investor Relations, MarCom, and Venture Capital partners. "Who created
John & ORRBITT were recently featured in LIFE SCIENCES REVIEW MAGAZINE as a 2022 Top Marketing Services Company for the Life Sciences.
Also in 2022, ORRBITT finally decided to go after a couple, maybe a handful, of design awards. We loaded up with 30+ (a mix of gold, silver, bronze) across 5 competitions; Hermes Awards, Healthcare Ad Awards, Aster Awards, Communicator Awards, and Digital Health Awards.
If that wasn't enough for the first half of 2023, John was hand-selected by Cricket Wireless as a paid spokesperson for a national campaign featuring real-customers. So why John and ORRBITT
Skills
Art Direction, B2B, Brand / Logo Design, Brand Management, Brand Stategy, Branding, Colour, Content, Copywriting, Creative, Creative Direction, Illustration, Presentation, UX/UI, Web Design, Web Development
Sector Experience
Arts, Branding, Creative Services, Design, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical
Awards
Aster Award, Communicator Award, Healthcare Advertising Award, Hermes Creative Award - Gold, Hermes Creative Award - Platinum